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MANMOHAN SINGH

Personal Life

Manmohan Singh Kohli more popularly known as Manmohan Singh was born on 26 September 1932 in a Sikh family in Gah which was initially in Pakistan but now in Punjab. Manmohan Singh was the 14th Prime Minister of Independent India and is a great Indian economist. Manmohan Singh also takes the credit of being the first Sikh or Non Hindu to become the Prime Minister.

Also next to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru he was the first Prime Minister to be re- elected to office after the first five periods or tenure of Prime Minister respectively from 2004 to 2014. At the time of India Pakistan partition in 1947 Manmohan Singh's family migrated to Amritsar in India. He was an extra ordinarily a brilliant student throughout his academic career.

Manmohan Singh after his schooling went for his graduation in Punjab University in Chandigarh from 1952 to 1954 and later did an Honors degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge and later in 1962 he completed his D.Phil. in Economics from Nuffield College under Oxford University. Manmohan Singh married in 1958 to Gursharan Kaur and is survived with three daughters, Upinder Singh, Amrit Singh and Daman Singh.

Upinder Singh is a history professor at the University of Delhi, Amrit Singh works at the American Civil Liberties Union as a staff attorney and Daman Singh is a graduate from the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat. She has married Mr. Ashok Patnaik, an I.P.S. Officer. Manmohan Singh loves to read and write books. Manmohan Singh is a heart patient with multiple cardiac bypass surgeries undergone by him and the latest one took place in January 2009.

Manmohan Singh has a very clean political picture where he owns a personal asset of five crores rupees and has a property worth Rs 1.8 crores in Chandigarh. Apart from this he owns a house in Chandigarh which is about Rs 90 lakh and an apartment in Vasant Kunj in Delhi worth Rs 88 lakh. He also has a bank deposit of about Rs 3.2 crore.

Professional framework

After his Doctrate from the Oxford University he came to India and taught in the Department of Economics in Punjab University as a senior Lecturer from 1957 to 1959. From 1959 to 1963 he was a reader and then for the next two years from 1963 to 1965 he served as a Professor. In 1966 he was an Honorary Professor at Delhi School of Economics under the Delhi University.

Manmohan Singh worked for the United Nations on Trade and Development from 1966-69. From 1969 to 1971 he worked in the International trade as a Professor. Once he returned to India he was delegated with a succession of economic advisory posts and thus began his bureaucratic career when Lalit Narayan Mishra hired him as a Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Trade from 1972 to 1976.

Soon he became a frequent consultant to Prime Ministers. Manmohan Singh performed duties in the Reserve Bank of India as director from 1976-80 and as governor from 1982-85. The Planning Commission of India was headed by Manmohan Singh from 1985 to 1987. From 1987 to November 1990, he was sworn in as the Secretary General of the South Commission, which is an independent economic think-tank based in Geneva, Switzerland. Once back in India Singh became the Advisor on Economic Affairs to the Prime Minister.

In March 1991 he was inducted as the Union Public Commission's Chairman and later the Chairman of the University Grants Commission. It was during the tenure of Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao in 1991 the country was on the verge of a major economic collapse and during that time Rao surprisingly included Manmohan Singh in his cabinet as Finance Minister.

Manmohan Singh worked on the devaluation of the rupee, lowered taxes, privatized state-run industries, and encouraged foreign investment; reforms that helped transform the country's economy and spark an economic boom. Manmohan Singh served as the Finance Minister till 1996 and in the 1999 Lok Sabha election he lost.

Political Entry and Career

As already mentioned Manmohan Singh made his debut into Indian politics when the then Prime Minister of India P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991 when he brought in Manmohan Singh in his cabinet as Finance Minister. Unfortunately because of the poor performance of the poor performance of the Congress in 1998 election Singh served as Leader of the Opposition and also acted as a baton in the Rajya Sabha or the upper house of India's Parliament during the period of Atal Bihari Vajpayee government of 1998-2004.

Manmohan Singh was quite popular with accepting rid of several left-wing policies, abnormally the License Raj. Singh was highly supported by the people of India especially for the sake of his highly educated career. The Chairperson of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Sonia Gandhi when won the election in 2004 surprisingly and voluntarily renounced the office of the Prime Minister to be headed by Manmohan Singh.

The United progressive Alliance (UPA) headed by Manmohan Singh implemented and accomplished a number of important legislations and projects, including the Rural Health Mission, Unique Identification Authority, Rural Employment Guarantee scheme and Right to Information Act. When the Left Front Parties withdrew their support, the Singh headed government was about to fall in 2008 in concern with the opposition to a historic civil nuclear agreement with the United States.

Though there was a rapid growth in the economy of India under the guidance of United Progressive Alliance (UPA I), its security was threatened by several terrorist incidents like the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the continuing Maoist insurgency. Once again in the 2009 election the United Progressive Alliance won majority and once again Manmohan Singh returned to office as Prime Minister.

But however in the next few years Manmohan Singh faced a number of allegations and charges against his government like corruption charges of the Commonwealth Games, the 2G-spectrum allocation and the allocation of coal blocks. Finally in the 2014 elections he very clearly stated that he is not going to contest.

Honours and Awards

Manmohan Singh was conferred with a number of honors and awards.

Adam Smith Award - 1956, University of Cambridge

Padma Vibhushan - 1987

Euromoney Award - Finance Minister of the Year, 1993

Asiamoney Award - Finance Minister of the Year for Asia, 1993 and 1994

Honorary Doctor of Law - University of Alberta, 1997

Honorary Doctor of Civil Law - University of Oxford, 2005

Honorary Doctor of Civil Law - University of Cambridge, 2006

Honorary Doctor of Letters degree - Benaras Hindu University, 2008

Honorary doctorate degree - University of Madras, 2008

Honorary doctorate degree - King Saud University.

Services

In 1991 Manmohan Singh played a major role in bringing up the economy of the country where he released India from the Licence Raj, source of slow economic growth and corruption. Singh used the best of economic policies to loosen restrictions in the Indian economy so as to increase the motion of its development. In fact Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister along with the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, takes the credit of increasing the Indian economy by a growth rate of 8-9% .

The most notable feature of the Indian economy was that in 2007, India achieved its highest GDP growth rate of 9% and became the second fastest growing major economy in the world. The highway modernization project named Golden Quadrilateral started by the earlier BJP government was continued by Manmohan Singh's government. He also worked on the projects of releasing the farmers of their debt.

It was during his time the sales tax was replaced by the value added tax system. Dr. Singh has represented India at many international conferences and in several international organizations. He has led Indian Delegations to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Cyprus (1993) and to the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993.



With healthcare industries Manmohan Singh's came up with the National Rural Health Mission project which deployed nearly half a million community health workers which was highly appreciated by the American economist Jeffrey Sachs. Nearly 8 IIT's were opened in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Orissa, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme was also started by Manmohan Singh mainly to clear off illiteracy in rural areas along with mid day meals. The important National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Right to Information Act were passed by the Parliament in 2005 during his tenure. It was during the tenure of Manmohan Singh the nearly four decades closed Nathula Pass was open on 2006 showing a major development in Sino-Indian relations.

Under the leadership of Manmohan Singh, India has emerged as one of the single largest aid donors to Afghanistan. Being a great economist Manmohan Singh has written a number of articles which were published in popular economic journals. Manmohan Singh is the author of the book called India's Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth which was published in the year 1964.